Sun’s CEO says OpenOffice will have adverts

The popularity of OpenOffice as a free alternative to suites like Microsoft Office was made clear when over 3 million downloads of OpenOffice 3 were made when it recently became available. But some users may be surprised, or even upset, to find that OpenOffice could be introducing adverts.

The news of potential advertising came via a blog post by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. At the bottom of a post entitled “The Inside Story (Java, Microsoft and MySQL)” Schwartz said:

To put some data around its popularity, last week, we distributed more than 3,000,000 copies of OpenOffice 3. Downloads are accelerating, giving us a reachable user base we estimate to be between 150,000,000 and 200,000,000 users – a global recession will amplify OpenOffice adoption. And 100’s of millions of users drive a lot of foot traffic. An auction’s afoot (no pun intended) to see who we’ll be partnering with us to integrate their businesses and brands into our binary product distribution – the possibilities are limitless: people tend to print those documents, fax them, copy them, project them

He added after that in small print:

and I know this annoys my friends in the free software community, but branding allows us to invest more in OO.o community and features, from which everyone benefits

Matthew’s Opinion
I’m am sure talk of OpenOffice displaying advertisements is going to upset a lot of people. There are no concrete details of what exactly Schwartz is talking about, but the suggestion is that companies will be able to brand OpenOffice. This may be on the actual interface, or every time you produce a document via print, fax, or copy.

What I am hoping he means is you will still be able to get your basic ad-free version of OpenOffice as you can now, but companies will be able to also host OpenOffice for download, but also be able to apply their own branding to it in return. So, for example, if you download OpenOffice from company X’s site you will suffer the branding they ad to it.

If this is mandatory advertising for future versions then I think we will see a major backlash from users. OpenOffice has built up a big following because it is free and well made. Adding adverts to that dilutes the experience somewhat and would get in the way of productivity. Adverts take up space so how would that affect the interface? Companies use OpenOffice for official documents, could they really have Company X branding on those documents?

I think Jonathan Schwartz needs to make it clear what exactly is going to happen as soon as possible. I’m sure people who contributed to the open source development of OpenOffice are also wondering what is going on.

Speak Your Mind

thedude

I find it very interesting to see how much companies rely on total downloads to actual use. I have been testing Star/Open office for the last few years. And every year I get closer to actually switching but have not made the leap yet. I do install open office on relatives computers if they have no desire to spend money on Office but need a word processor for reports, homework, etc. Most home users are not what he is targeting I would think. However this does put a really interesting aspect on “Opensource” when the programs come from a closed source group. Does this me we can expect to see suns virtual box, or solaris 10 with adverts also? And does this set the precedent for other companies that have opensourced their products now to do the same?
I can think of only a few products over the years that came with ads. And all but gmail have not done well.
I am reminded of that Tom Petty song the last DJ with the lyric “… the boys upstairs want to see how much you’ll pay for what you used to get for free…”

thedude

mugre pinzon

I for one avoid software that includes advertisements in the interface. If openoffice ends up displaying ads while the user is going about his or her work I suspect they’ll end up with a lot fewer users than they think they’ve got.
Also, since the download of the product is free, the number of downloads doesn’t reflect the actual user base. A lot of people probably inadvertantly download it when they’re updating java on their computer, and don’t even know they’ve got openoffice (or know what it is) on their computer…

capitalist

First of all, why is the CEO of Sun making this decision? Sun claims that the OpenOffice development process is fully open and that they don’t control it. If that’s true, they can’t make decisions about advertising (or anything else). If they do make such decisions, they’re announcing to the world that OpenOffice is not truly open.

Second, if OpenOffice introduces some type of advertising scheme, users will simply switch to Symphony. IBM at least understands that they can’t retain control of an open-source project if they want it to have any credibility. I’ve been meaning to take a look at Symphony anyway.